What the! This is one enormous catfish!
Dino Ferrari and his brother Dario said they lured the monster fish with artificial bait from their small boat and then faught for over 40 minutes to land the monster.
There are stories of monster fish eating ducks, swans, rats and even pigeons, the question is, could this catfish be big enough to swallow a human!?
After weighing the fish, Dino said they released it back in to the water to swim another day.
An enormous catfish weighing 20 stone has been caught in Italy using only a fishing rod.
Dino Ferrari told GrindTV that he and his brother, Dario, lured it in with artificial bait and then battled the giant fish from their small boat for 40 minutes on Thursday
The 280-pound catfish caught by an Italian fisherman is one huge and record-setting catfish. With an enormous weight of 280 pounds and a length of 8.8 feet, the catfish caught by Dino Ferrari has some people wondering whether the monstrous catfish could in fact eat a man if it wanted to do so.
Source: Examiner and The Independent
Wels Catfish
The wels catfish (/ˈwɛls/ or /ˈvɛls/; Silurus glanis), also called sheatfish, is a large catfish native to wide areas of central, southern, and eastern Europe, and near the Baltic and Caspian Seas. It has been introduced to Western Europe and is now found from the United Kingdom all the way east to Kazakhstan and south to Greece. It is a scaleless fresh and brackish water fish recognizable by its broad, flat head and wide mouth. Wels catfish can live for at least thirty years and have very good hearing.
The wels catfish lives on annelid worms, gastropods, insects, crustaceans, and fish including other catfishes; the larger ones also eat frogs, mice, rats, and aquatic birds such as ducks. Recently, individuals of this species in environments that are not their native habitats have been observed lunging out of the water to grab pigeons on land.
Size
With a possible total length up to 4 m (13 ft) and a maximum weight of over 400 kg (880 lb) it is the second largest freshwater fish in its region after the beluga sturgeon. However, such lengths are extremely rare and could not be proved during the last century, but there is a somewhat credible report from the 19th century of a wels catfish of this size. Brehms Tierleben cites Heckl’s and Kner’s old reports from Danube about specimens 3m (9.8ft) long and 200–250 kg (440–550 lb) in weight, and Vogt’s 1894 report of a specimen caught in Lake Biel which was 2.2 m (7ft 3in) long and weighed 68 kg (150 lb). In 1856, K. T. Kessler wrote about specimens from Dniepr which were over 5m (16 ft) long and weighed up to 400 kg (880 lb).
Most wels catfish are only about 1.3–1.6m (4ft 3in–5ft 3in) long; fish longer than 2m (6ft 7in) are normally extremely rare. At 1.5m (4ft 11in) they can weigh 15–20 kg (33–44 lb) and at 2.2m (7ft 3in) they can weigh 65 kg (143 lb).
